NY Bill Would Make Crimes Out Of SAT Cheating The measure, proposed by Sen. Kenneth LaValle of Suffolk County, would create new felonies of facilitation of education testing fraud and of scheming to defraud educational testing and create a misdemeanor of forgery of a test. The felonies would apply to a test taker who impersonates someone else for pay. (The Huffington Post)

College majors and their income potential At the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, let’s not let the need to earn money squelch our children’s desire to do great work in jobs they love. College doesn’t just set the course for their life’s earning potential; it sets the course for their lives. (The Washington Post)

The True Cost of High School Dropouts Only 21 states require students to attend high school until they graduate or turn 18. The proposal President Obama announced on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address — to make such attendance compulsory in every state — is a step in the right direction, but it would not go far enough to reduce a dropout rate that imposes a heavy cost on the entire economy, not just on those who fail to obtain a diploma. (The New York Times)

Textbook publishers prep for the e-future Textbook publishers Houghton and Pearson have dedicated teams working with Apple’s new software tools to create textbooks for the iPad, similar to how music companies agreed to let Apple digitize songs for iTunes. These are not the first digital products the publishers have created, but they’re the first that must reflect Apple’s signature style. (The Boston Globe)

About the blogger

Alex Friedrich reports on higher education issues for MPR News. Among the stories he has covered: the fall of the Berlin Wall, aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, 2003 Moscow suicide bombing and 2004 presidential elections in the Republic of Georgia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s in European political economy from the London School of Economics.